Why solving the ‘leakage’ problem is top priority for publishers
The Media Leader Interview
From starting out in sales to becoming the head of the online publisher trade body, Richard Reeves speaks about leakage in the supply chain, priorities for online publishers, and how rugby informs his leadership style.
Richard Reeves tells The Media Leader its “biggest single mission” can be summed up in one word: leakage.
No sniggering in the back, children. Leakage is a serious problem impacting on media owners that rely on online advertising sold on the open Web.
Reeves, who is managing director of the Association of Online Publishers (AOP), has had a lot on his plate during his six years at the helm. From representing its 30 publisher members at consultations for the Online Advertising Programme and Online Harms Bill, to collaborating on a cross-industry study into the very topic of leakage with ISBA and PwC.
The ISBA / AOP / PwC programmatic supply chain transparency study won three awards at this year’s Mediatel Media Research Awards – after having been widely regarded as a landmark exposé into the how the open Web supply chain operates.
Now, the AOP is currently talking to a number of advertisers and its community of publishers to support a second stage of the programmatic supply chain study.
He jokes he cannot “plug every leak”, but he can be a part of the right forums and conversations which is “the most relevant way” to affect change going forward to help remove some of the challenges and complexities.
Reeves explains: “Everything is required to be connected by pipes and it’s a plumber’s nightmare.
“You have a situation where there are so many different pipes with so many different functions throughout that ecosystem, it supports intermediaries, it supports the publishers, the advertisers, every party within that ecosystem and it’s been built with the right motivations, the right innovations and the right aspirations, but so many parties have been part of this process that everybody has effectively approached this initially, perhaps, from their own individual perspective.”
Reeves says the hope is by the end of March or beginning of April to be able to go into market to conduct this stage of the study and by the summer to have data to demonstrate its effectiveness.
“As was demonstrated with the transparency supply chain study, naturally, you get to a point where you think we have created some complexities that make this aspect of the business such as auditing your supply chain more challenging than they should be,” he says.
“There are behaviours that are either concerning regulators or concerning us as responsible constituents of the media industry.”
Telesales to media to rugby to AOP
Reeves’ fell into the media industry “accidentally” like many others and his journey through media started as he decided to “shun” further education and apply for every classified in advertising and publishing he could.
He started working in tele-sales at Centaur Publishing in 1984, before moving to different roles at companies including FT Publishing, start-ups and in the international media community.
He took a five-year break from media in the early noughties to get to know his then 10 and 13-year-old children better and became a development officer at the Rugby Football Union (RFU).
He initially worked with the AOP on a consulting basis, confessing he did not know a lot about trade bodies and what they involved at that time, before eventually taking on the managing director position.
What are the other priorities for publishers?
Broadly, he mentions publishers developing post-cookie solutions and tackling complexities around misinformation as what the publishing industry is talking about as a priority this year.
He says: “Publishers have began to understand the importance of that relationship with their users, and the importance of listening to their users and adapting and going beyond representing the opinions that you would expect that your proprietary media provider would offer you, but to recognise our broader responsibility to be able to challenge our own opinions and present other wider views that hopefully will help develop and address some of those societal issues that have been identified in the last couple of years.”
Reeves also mentions how he sees “a new dawn” for publishers in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. There have been challenges in harnessing new technologies, but also “unintended consequences” such as first-party data growth opportunities for revenue.
Digital publishing revenues were up 13.4% in Q4 2021 compared to Q4 2020 and in a recent AOP survey, developing and diversifying revenue streams was highlighted as a top priority for b2b and b2c publishers alongside first-party data strategies.
The future of regulation and self-regulation also feature heavily in Reeves’ conversations as leader of the AOP.
He says these require him to recognise the balance between the needs of consumers and users and understanding potential outcomes of legislation that have not been previously considered.
Trade bodies teach you resourcefulness
Through this role he has learned resilience and resourcefulness: “You live and work on a shoestring within a trade body and by the time it was suggested to me that I might like to take the role of leading AOP moving forward, my principal motivation was yes that seems an eloquent way to pay back an industry that has enabled me to have the life I’ve had.”
In terms of leadership, Reeves says he also learned a great deal during his time working in start-ups, international media and for the RFU.
He explains: “You have to be prepared to do everything and not ask anyone to do anything you wouldn’t do yourself. Everyone has to roll up their sleeves and that international community was much smaller, more intimate, and it was something I valued greatly.”
“I’d like to think that as a leader, I’m one of those that leads by example. I trust people. They don’t need micromanaging and I like to treat everyone as as adults.”
During his time at the RFU, he learned very quickly about teamwork and “the fine balance” between being fun and being clear about boundaries.
He adds: “There is no better demonstration of the importance of functioning as a team than in rugby- it’s for all shapes and sizes and all different skills, but you will only succeed if everybody has got each other’s back and are supporting each other, doing what they are supposed to do well, and that’s when a team really fires.”
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